From tingling and numbness to burning sensations, persistent pain, and general weakness, a pinched nerve can affect how you move and feel throughout the day.
A local chiropractor can help diagnose a pinched nerve and offer you a personalized treatment plan that could help you get back to feeling more like yourself.
What Is a Pinched Nerve?
A pinched nerve occurs when surrounding structures like bones, joints, muscles, or ligaments place excess pressure on a nerve. This compression or irritation often interferes with normal nerve function, creating uncomfortable sensations all along the path of the affected nerve.
Issues with spinal joints, discs, muscles, and nearby tissues can all play a role in causing nerve irritation, but those aren’t the only likely causes. Even the most subtle of changes in spinal movement or alignment can affect the space around nerves enough to cause discomfort.
Where Can Pinched Nerves Occur?
Pinched nerves can develop in several areas, some of the most common of which are in the neck and lower back. However, the symptoms aren’t always limited to the area where the excess compression originates.
For example, nerve irritation that originates in the neck can cause discomfort that travels into nearby body parts like the shoulder, arm, or hand. The same goes for compression that happens in the lower spine, which can often create symptoms that extend into the hips, buttocks, legs, or feet.
What Are Common Signs of a Pinched Nerve?
The symptoms of a pinched nerve can vary depending on the exact location of the nerve and severity of the irritation. Some people experience sharp pain, aching, or burning that can feel debilitating, and many others experience almost the opposite with numbness or pins-and-needles sensations that reduce mobility and make muscles feel weaker than they should.
In many cases, symptoms often become more noticeable during particular movements or after sitting or standing in the same position for an extended period. However, everyone’s experience is different. It all depends on the details of your specific injury and how you tend to move throughout the day.
What Can Cause a Pinched Nerve?
There is not one universal cause of a pinched nerve. Spinal alignment, restricted joint movement, disc changes, inflammation, injuries, repetitive movements, and prolonged postural stress can all contribute to creating excess pressure or irritation around a nerve.
For some people, everyday movement patterns that gradually place stress on certain areas of the body can cause a pinched nerve. For others, it can be an old injury causing the problem or changes in spinal mechanics that influence how force is distributed through the spine.
This is why looking beyond the immediate discomfort is so important and why chiropractic care can be such a good option. Corrective chiropractic care takes a holistic view of the body and considers how the spine is moving and functioning, giving your chiropractor a much clearer understanding of the factors that may be contributing to your recurring nerve irritation.
How Can a Chiropractor Help With a Pinched Nerve?
If you have a pinched nerve, a chiropractor may be able to help in a number of different ways, and all of that starts with an initial evaluation. Chiropractors can evaluate spinal movement, alignment, posture, and the many other mechanical factors that often contribute to nerve irritation. A chiropractor can help identify the location of the nerve that’s causing the problems in the first place.
After your initial evaluation, your chiropractor can then employ a wide variety of different chiropractic care techniques that may help support healthier movement and reduce some of the physical stress affecting the surrounding area.
Common Care Techniques
Some of the most common of these techniques are spinal adjustments and traction, which involve applying varying degrees of targeted force to realign joints and relieve tension. Though these are different techniques, both have the potential to help you move better and healthier while also helping relieve that extra pressure that is being placed on your nerves.
The right approach completely depends on what is actually causing your symptoms and how your body responds to care. But, regardless of the specifics, here are some of the most common ways that a chiropractor can treat pinched nerve symptoms.
When Should You See a Chiropractor for a Pinched Nerve?
Though mild nerve irritation often settles with rest and changes in activity, symptoms that persist, return frequently, or worsen are all valid reasons to seek out a chiropractor to treat your pinched nerve. That being said, there are certain pinched nerve symptoms that you should address sooner rather than later.
Severe or progressing muscle weakness, loss of function, or major changes in bladder or bowel control are all symptoms that you shouldn’t overlook or ignore. But no matter what your symptoms are, if you feel like they are seriously impacting your everyday life, there’s a good chance that chiropractic care may be able to help.
Contact Goshen Family Chiropractic
Do you suspect that you might have a pinched nerve? Are you looking for an experienced, local chiropractor who can help? Give us a call.
Our team, led by West Chester’s own Dr. Raj, is always here to answer questions and will happily help you schedule your first appointment at a time that’s convenient for you. Then we’ll sit down with you for an evaluation and put you on a personalized treatment plan that targets the root cause of the problem and has the potential to put you on the right path toward recovery.
At Goshen Family Chiropractic, we believe that no one should ever have to live their life in pain or with limited mobility when all it takes is the right chiropractic treatment plan to help. So, don’t let your pinched nerve affect your daily life. Contact Goshen Family Chiropractic and schedule your initial evaluation today.
